Midweek Videoage: Damn, I Miss Barkmarket

I figured heck, I’m in a video-posting mood, so why not keep it rolling… The two videos below amply demonstrate why even now, a decade after the band broke up, I still can’t help but think of NYC madmen Barkmarket as the quintessential heavy rock (not metal, mind you, but loud, heavy, stomping rock) band of all freakin’ time.

Both songs below, “Dumbjaw” and “Whipping Boy”, are off 1993’s supremely speaker-destroying Gimmick, and listening back that album I just want to build a time machine and travel back to the early ’90s, grab the band, and drag them forward to now, when they would rule what passes for Rock Radio with an iron fist and make all bow down before them. These guys are one of those rare bands that really-and-truly were ahead of their time, in this case by a whole damn decade. I saw them play Fitzgerald’s once way back in the day, to a crowd of fewer than 20 people, and by the time they were done I had to pick my face up off the floor.

Naturally, being a big ol’ fanboy, I then staggered up to the stage and quietly asked vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Dave Sardy if he could maybe please sign something, anything for me. He said, “sure, what you got?” in full-on Noo Yawk accent, and I feebly offered up a scrap of paper I’d found in my pocket while telling him how awesome his band was. He thanked me very politely, finished packing up his gear, and headed out so they headliner could set up. And I’ve got no freakin’ clue who the hell they were opening for — by that point, I honestly didn’t care.

Sadly, as hinted at above, they are no more. Sardy is now a big-time engineer & producer, which actually explains a little bit of why his former band sounds so goddamned prescient: Sardy’s essentially grafted elements of Barkmarket’s overall sound — which, for its time, was absolutely crushing but still clear and full-sounding, unlike a lot of hc-influenced stuff back then that sounded like shit — onto every “heavy” band from here to Mars, including Helmet, System Of A Down, Far, Marilyn Manson, Rage Against The Machine, Wolfmother, Monster Magnet, Slayer, & Quicksand (not to mention non-“heavy” folk like Johnny Cash, Hot Hot Heat, LCD Soundsystem, and, uh, Jay-Z).

So, the moral of this little post: even if your band doesn’t hit it big, you can still alter the face of rock as we know it. How cool is that?